On the highest level it is the war for the world order between democracies and autocracies.
On the level below it is a war for the spheres of influence between China and US.
Next, it is Russian war for the control of the Europe and middle east.
Below it is the wars by Iranian/Russian/Chinese proxies to help with the goals mentioned above.
In all ongoing conflicts the parties are aligned with the China on top of the chain in one side of the conflict and the US on the other.
Profits from stealing goods, people, or territories are just a means to ease the path to the goal or to improve the strategic position, but not the source of the conflict itself.
that all sounds like a nice theory but i feel like it absolves the actors of their actions and doesn’t actually add any details to what i was saying like i asked. it offers very little explanatory or predictive power so im not really sure what the point of the theory is except to assume a structure that could also be more simply explained by gordon gekko, “greed is good.”
I don't know why you say that it doesn't have predictive power, as it absolutely does.
For example, I predict that as long as western democracies will continue to depend on autocracies (there is no sign for that to stop), the existing wars will continue to expand and conflicts multiply.
On the level below it is a war for the spheres of influence between China and US.
Next, it is Russian war for the control of the Europe and middle east.
Below it is the wars by Iranian/Russian/Chinese proxies to help with the goals mentioned above.
In all ongoing conflicts the parties are aligned with the China on top of the chain in one side of the conflict and the US on the other.
Profits from stealing goods, people, or territories are just a means to ease the path to the goal or to improve the strategic position, but not the source of the conflict itself.